Money & Me - 2024

How much money I've taken as a freelance illustrator this year

Well, 2024 was fun and crazy and at times really boring and incredibly frustrating and also super exciting. Anyway, I survived.

Right now freelance illustration is not an easy way to earn money, but I still enjoy it and I’m not in debt so I’m taking that as a win. I’ve also got so many new ideas I want to explore and feel lucky that I can afford to investigate these areas of inspiration, so overall I feel really fortunate.

MONEY OVERVIEW

My turnover in 2024 was just over £38k, an improvement on almost £34k in 2023. This is turnover, so before any expenses come out. For those on salaries, this isn’t comparable to a £38k salary, there’s no sick / holiday pay, no pension contributions and I have to pay to rent my place of work etc. Also, my income is not consistent. For example in January I only took £165 (ouch).

EXPENSES

My expenses vary depending on what type of work comes in, but they are generally pretty hefty (around 20-30% of my turnover). When I do live illustration, expenses include trains to London from Bristol & hotel stays. My studio costs me around £3k per year, £1k for accountancy and then money for insurance, software, art equipment, postage, printing and more and more and more.

I pay myself max £30k over the course of a 12 month period. I transfer small amounts in to a pension and an ISA. To be transparent, I’m 48 and live alone in a house I bought when I was 39 - I have a mortgage that’s a fairly manageable amount. This year I’ve rented my spare room out to short term renters to help with bills and to cover the cost of my studio. I live quite frugally, I don’t own a car, I don’t buy much other than food, and my house needs a fair amount of TLC (but my ever failing eyesight helps me ignore that). This year I managed a week in Corfu and it was totally amazing and I hereby vow to go on holiday every year.

AREAS OF WORK - 2024 BREAKDOWN

LIVE ILLUSTRATION

My target was £20k and I took £21,558 so I’m thrilled with that. Live illustration at events pays well, and this year I’ve done some really cool work that’s pushed this area for me eg illustrating on to notebooks, perfume bottles and creating beautiful scene illustrations to add guests in to.

At events I typically create one original artwork every 10 minutes, for at least 3 hours. Ten years ago I charged £180 per hour for this work (£30 per original artwork) which I soon realised was too low. For the last few years I've charged £300 per hour (£50 per original artwork). There is of course a risk to sharing my costs here, but I like to work with companies who hire me because of my high standard of work and proven record, not because I’m the cheapest quote they’ve had in.

BRANDS

Let’s get the most disappointing area over with. I was aiming for a £33k turnover in this area alone and I really went for it. I spent time and money on my website and portfolio projects, continued to aim my instagram at brands and I emailed and sent things in the post to people who work for brands too. But my turnover in this area was £7428.

I turned down two projects where the clients (who I’d worked with before) wanted the same amount of work /usage but for around 70% less than they had paid in the past. I then took a project that paid around 40% of what I’d quoted, just because I really wanted to do it and I thought it would look good in my portfolio. It’s too soon to see if that decision will pay off, but I did really enjoy it.

Brand work is my favourite, I love diving in to a project and coming up with great ideas that I know the customer will love, but for the last couple of years I’ve seen this area decrease for me. I’m determined that this will improve and am holding my nerve and improving my skills all the time.

TEACHING / WORKSHOPS

In 2024 I took £1734 from workshops, my target was £2k so that was pretty good. I ran a fashion design for Textiles students workshop for Loughborough Uni, Fashion Design for Taylor Swift and a weekend flower painting for Beth Morris too.

ART / RETAIL

This year I’ve taken £2487 in art sales despite my target being £5k. I’m not too worried as haven’t put much time in to this area at all. The sales have mostly come from bespoke illustrations of people and pets, and my Taylor Swift prints.

REPORTAGE

This year I was thrilled to invoice £1k in this area of reportage. I worked with Bristol Refugee Festival, Reclaim the Sea and Super Culture to create illustrated scenes where photography wasn’t appropriate. I’m really passionate about this area of my work and look forward to developing it further.

I was also very lucky to receive an Arts Council Develop Your Creative Practice Grant (DYCP) in order to develop an ethical and sustainable reportage practice. This grant has paid me £800 per month from September, and will continue to pay me to research in to 2025. Read more about this here.

WRITING

A total of around £1000. This year I launched my Substack. It’s not easy to see exactly how much I’ve taken this year unless I dive in the back end of Stripe, but I think around £800 / 900 ish. I’ve also been paid to interview and write an article for The AOI so that’s been great.

SO, WHAT’S NEXT?

The BIG news is that I’ve already secured quite a lot of work for next year, over £15k worth within the first 6 months….and I’m in talks about another project too. It’s mostly live illustration work and an artist residency. But also I’ve got some work creating community art workshops for a research project with Bristol Uni and the NHS, a totally new area for me. I can tell you that going in to the new year knowing there is some money coming in is amazing, it has such an impact on me and I feel way more relaxed and free to be creative in January.

So, good luck to all of the freelancers getting ready to leap in to action in 2025. I hope this has been an interesting and useful read for you. I offer this insight up for free, so please show your thanks by commenting below, posting the link to your social media, or sharing my number with your favourite single millionaire.

Happy New Year!

Niki

It’s so useful to know when your busy months are - this pattern is similar for me every year. I take so much more in the last 6 months of the year and then in January it’s always quiet….

WANT SOME HELP?

The below is for those who want to get their head around their finances but just find the whole thing totally overwhelming….who know that they will get totally distracted if they try and draw straight lines with a ruler or start a spreadsheet. So if you’re keen then grab some big pieces of card out of the recycling and any old pen and let’s get started…..

So, start with a big piece of paper or card - ideally larger than A4.

Then write all of the categories you work in along the top, and write January top left. Then go through your invoices in order and list each amount from January. Then write February and continue month by month. I don’t suggest drawing lines or writing all the months out first, just keep it really simple and neat and NOT SQUASHED. You don’t need to write the invoice number of the client or a pound sign, just write the number. The basics of it will look like this.

Then when you add in the amounts it will look something like this. Then when you add every monthly amount up, or every category up, you’ll get your turnover bottom right.

Then if you want to work out what percentage each section is, it’s like this……

Mine looks like this. It’s a mess, it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else but that’s fine. I don’t have to submit it anywhere, it’s not my official accounts, it can be ripped up and recycled. But for me this process is invaluable.

Please do give it a go and let me know how you get on…..

Wishing you a happy, healthy, creative and fulfilling 2025.

Niki